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Transit of Venus, Tuesday

June 1, 2012

There’s a lot of excitement around the Transit of Venus event even though this rare astronomical experience will hold little scientific value. This upcoming Tuesday, Venus will cross the face of the sun. The journey will take about seven hours and begin at 6:09 p.m. EDT.

The next time Venus journeys across the sun will be in the year 2117, says Jack Lissauer, Kepler Mission co-investigator and planetary scientist at NASA Ames Research. “This is the last chance for almost everybody unless we have huge medical advances,” Lissauer says.

In 1769 Capt. James Cook set up an examination point in Tahiti, French Polynesia, where he collected data on Venus during the transit that took place over 243 years ago. To this day, the place Cook observed Venus’ trail across the sun is known as Point Venus. For those who want to watch the entire six-hour, 40-minute event, Tahiti is a good place to be. Past Transits of Venus were used to understand the size of the solar system and the distance between planets, Lissauer said.
“If you are in a certain part of the globe, and this includes Alaska and much of the Pacific and eastern Australia and some of northeast Asia, you can see the entire transit,” Lissauer says.

If you would like to look at the transit before sunset you will need either a special pair of glasses, a telescope with a special filter or a pinhole camera so you do not damage your eyes.

Those in the mid-Pacific will have great views because the sun will be high above during the crossing. In the United States the sunset will offer the best views. At sunrise in 2004, the end of the Transit of Venus was visible in the eastern United States. This time it will be sunset when people all over the United States will be able to view part of the transit. According to Lissauer, sunset is the best time to watch because you can observe Venus with the naked eye.

“When the sun is very close to the horizon and it is very red and you can normally look at the sun without hurting your eyes,” Lissauer says. “Then you can actually look at the sun directly and you will see this little circle caused by Venus blocking part of the sun’s light.”

What are your thoughts?